Carlo Prato

Carlo Prato is Professor in Transport Engineering at the School of Civil Engineering of The University of Queensland. He has a PhD from the Politecnico di Torino in Italy where he approached the study of travel behaviour by focusing on route choices of car drivers. It is his natural curiosity and passion for behavioural modelling that drives his research into understanding what makes people behave the way they do as pedestrians, cyclists, public transport users, and car drivers.

His research also looks at how people value congestion and reliability of transport systems, react to legislation trying to make their journeys safer, and accept and/or adapt (or not) to novel technologies and mobility solutions. Carlo contributes to the advancement of science in a cross-disciplinary environment by presenting his work in international conferences and publishing his contributions in prestigious journals as well as serving as a reviewer and editorial board member of journals spanning from engineering to psychology and medicine. Recently, Carlo has been named Associate Editor of Transportation Research Part F: Traffic Psychology and Behaviour, the journal of the International Association of Applied Psychology.

Prior to joining UQ’s School of Civil Engineering at the beginning of 2016, Carlo worked at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology – and the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) where he became Professor in 2013. During his time at DTU, he received the 2014 Pyke Johnson Award from the Transportation Research Board of the U.S. National Academies for the best paper in planning and environment at the 93rd Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board: “Estimating value of congestion and value of reliability from the observation of route choice behavior of car drivers” with Thomas K. Rasmussen and Otto A. Nielsen.

Most recently, Carlo was the recipient of the 2017 Partners in Research Excellence Award from The University of Queensland for his work in the partnership with the Port of Brisbane that aims at developing port growth. Awardees for the partnership were also Dr. Alistair Grinham from the School of Civil Engineering, Dr. Peggy Schrobback from the School of Economics, and Mr Rob Nave, General Manager of Infrastructure and Environment of the Port of Brisbane Pty Ltd. The project is to futureproof Brisbane’s largest multi-cargo port in terms of sustainability, transport and economy, regionally and globally.

In 2016, Carlo was invited to join the UQ Self-Assessment Team for the SAGE pilot of the Athena SWAN program, which The University of Queensland is part of in order to address and improve gender equity in the science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine (STEMM) disciplines. He is also a member of the equity and diversity group at the Faculty of Engineering, Architecture and Information Technology (EAIT).

Carlo has about 90 peer-reviewed journal papers and over 130 reviewed conference contributions and a coming book with publisher Taylor & Francis Group that will bring him back to his initial interests in traffic: “Route Choice Behaviour and Traffic Assignment Models”.